broad green ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference from the
neighbouring grass, yet distinct for all that.  No villages nor
homesteads tempt it aside or modify its course for a yard; should you
lose the track where it is blent with the bordering turf or merged in
and obliterated by criss-cross paths, you have only to walk straight
on, taking heed of no alternative to right or left; and in a minute
'tis with you again -- arisen out of the earth as it were.  Or, if
still not quite assured, lift you your eyes, and there it runs over
the brow of the fronting hill.  Where a railway crosses it, it
disappears indeed -- hiding Alpheus-like, from the ignominy of rubble
and brick-work; but a little way on it takes up the running again with
the same quiet persistence.  Out on that almost trackless expanse of
billowy Downs such a track is in some sort humanly companionable: it
really seems to lead you by the hand. 

The ``Rudge'' is of course an exceptional instance; but indeed this
pleasant personality in roads is not entirely fanciful.  It exists as a
characteristic of the old country road, evolved out of the primitive
prehistoric track, developing according to the needs of the land it
passes through and serves: with a language, accordingly, and a meaning